Direction for [ Question No: 1 To 5 ] :
Read the following passage and answer the questions.
The boundaries between publisher, producer, distributor, consumer and reviewer of content are blurring. Mass media now incorporate many interpersonal and interactive aspects such as call-in radio and TV shows, home shopping through televisions with viewer conversations and telephone or online ordering, online commentaries and information accompanying television programms, 900-number hotlines or newsgroup discussions about weekly soap opera plot lines and characters, etc. Thus new media provide many more ways to choose content, which increases the influence of structural and cultural (factors) on peoples' notion of choice. Providing multiple forms of access to content which is freed from its linkages to particular physical distribution forms free us from constraints on allocation and transformation. Many people can use the same content at the same time. Selected aspects of content may be used in the sequence and timing preferred by the individual. One paradox of this increased accessibility, and decreased dependence on specific distribution media is that now individuals must make more choices, must have more prior knowledge, and must put forth more effort to integrate and make sense of the communication. Interactivity and choice are not universal benefits; many people do not have the energy, desire, need or training to engage in such processes. It is partially due to the idealization of the interactive nature of face to face communication that we expect every one will desire such capabilities. Some people really do love ATMs and answering machines. Being forced to wait in line to interact with people we have no connection with, while taking time away from interacting with others with whom we really do want to share a band, is not as attractive as proponents of interpersonal community dialogue imply. Many prefer the one way aspect of same mass media and the ability to experience simulated or vicarious choice. Alternatively the loss of programmed scripts and producer developed plot lines in hyper text novels or interactive programms may in fact lead to more uncertainty and confusion by users, and the lost sense of shared meaning. These changes also imply alterations in asymmetries of choice : that is traditional media tended to locate the choice of initiating the communication in one place. The common example is of traditional telephone calling : a person initiates a call to another without the other having any choice in the initiation. With the traditional telephone one could choose not to answer it, but, even with answering machines, that is not a widely acceptable social choice. Because we have not, until recently assessed the social aspect of telephone choice, we remain some what ambivalent about the telephone because of this asymmetry of choice. The meta-information about consumers, enables telemarketers to target potential consumers much more precisely and aggressively, increasing our discomfort with this asymmetry. Thus new media like caller ID, private celler phone networks, are used primarily to offset the asymmetry of choice inherent in this familiar 'old' medium.
